Just Genjustsu
by Bhel-Elryss
Summary: Sasuke killed Naruto. Kakashi died in ANBU. Sakura has the worst experience of her short life, but comes out of it with a hardened resolve. One-shot. Edited.


She waits for the boys to return, Sasuke in tow. She waits, and she waits. Day turns to night, and she dozes fitfully against her bedroom window, waiting for the boisterous moron to gleefully inform her of his success. At some point, she stops waking up to the ambient light of civilian Konoha's streetlights and wakes up to a sky painted orange by the sunrise. Her boys aren't home yet.

She waits two days, before Kakashi-sensei shows up at her door with his only visible eye shadowed. He holds out one hand and when she takes it, he transports them both to the hospital. "Is Naruto hurt?" she asks, because with all that's happened it's pretty much assured that Sasuke is hurt.

_He deserves to be hurt_, Inner says simply, strikingly surly. She's not too pleased to hear that from herself, but it's true. What with all the drama Sasuke had caused, him being unscathed would be completely unfair.

"Sort of." Kakashi-sensei says simply, and she presses her lips together grimly. They fall silent, and Sakura's worry turns to dread when their path takes them down several flights of stairs. The bowels of the hospital are not very friendly, and she's frightened by the silence. The words stick to the back of her throat, and she finds it difficult to voice her unease.

Her sensei doesn't look at her as they approach the morgue, and her fingers scramble to find purchase in the fabric of her qi pao. "S-Sensei?" she questions, halted in front of the doors. "Why are…Naruto isn't…he can't be?" But Kakashi doesn't speak, only moves forward.

Inner, in their shock, only wonders how many dead her sensei has seen if this is how he reacts. "He wanted you to have something." Is all Kakashi says, holding out a battered hitai-ite, "He's sorry he couldn't keep his promise."

And Sakura's world shatters, because the hardness in Kakashi's singular eye means this is all business. Just business. The pain of her nails digging into her arms proves it's no genjutsu, and her analytical mind _understands_.

Naruto didn't come back because Sasuke _killed_ him. Her _Sasuke-kun_ killed their moronic, well-meaning teammate.

She doesn't question why, Orochimaru explained that well enough in the forest. Inner is too busy wrangling in her scream of denial to offer comfort. So she nods, falling back on propriety and breeding to keep herself from falling apart. Her feelings and thoughts are scrambled, and she numbly walks herself home.

Kakashi drops by once a few days later to tell her he's rejoining ANBU, relays his apologies. Team Seven dissolves quietly, ignobly. As the only member left, or at least the only one without a backup plan, Sakura retires from shinobi life.

It's not the same, what is the point? Her boys are gone. She's alone and her parents don't care, they never question her silence and bruised looking eyes. They aren't home enough to notice, busy as they are with their trade networks.

So she devotes herself to something new. There's this chance she might make a good nurse, even a civilian one. She's smart enough, she thinks, and her intimate knowledge of the chakra system could lend itself well to saving lives. Guiltily, she thinks she might be able to move on.

She continues thinking that until Gai-sensei shows up during one of her shifts with horrible news. Awkward and quiet when she knows deep in her bones he should be exuberant and proud, he relays the untimely death of Hatake Kakashi. Just in case she had wanted to know. He was her sensei, after all. A piece of her heart that still cried for her team shattered, and she thanked him stoically. She had long ago run out of tears for her tragic team.

When she gets off shift she weighs down her coats pockets with never-used training weights, and lies down underneath their red bridge to watch the stars. In the dark she can pretend her boys are waiting for her. She holds her breath, and then breathes out bubbles.

And wakes up screaming.

Kakashi-sensei's visible eye blinks at her in surprise, and her breath hitches as she lunges forwards. Arms wrapped around him, she dissolves into tears. He pats her on the back, clearly feeling awkward. "Sakura-chan it was just a genjutsu. You _were_ taught how to dispel them in the Academy, weren't you?"

And she sobs harder, because she had been taught. Iruka-sensei had spent several lessons on it, but there were genjutsu she remembered _from within_ the genjutsu. She was just twelve and she remembered _killing herself_, even if the Sakura that had done that had been older. Sasuke spoke from behind her, "She finally up? Which of us passed then?" She almost flinched at his cold tone, and thought she heard Naruto snarl at him to shut up. Her heart was doing backflips, and her head was scrambling to separate the genjutsu from fact.

"Well," Kakashi said, prying her off, "none of you, Sasuke-kun! You're all totally unprepared to be shinobi. You should all just quit. But since I'm such a nice sensei...you two," he drawled, pointing at Sasuke and herself, "can eat those lunches, but don't share them with Naruto.

"We'll try again after a break, but this time I won't be going easy on you."

And she freezes in place, because Naruto is tied to a post, and she thought she'd- she'd thought-

Robotically, she offers some to Naruto, and suffers through the next few minutes on autopilot. After Kakashi-sensei passes them (just like he had in the genjutsu), she walks home and stares at her room. It looked exactly the same as when she'd left it this morning. Or had it been almost two years?

She cuts her hair that night in the bathroom, with one of her sharper kunai. She doesn't care if it was genjutsu or not, what she saw…what she did…would never be allowed to happen again.

* * *

Aaah, yeah I'm not entirely sure why I wanted to do this...I just knew I had to do a version of a time-loop fic. That's what I get for getting back into Naruto fanfic I guess. I'm a sucker for a good time-loop. Anyway...thanks for reading this far.

Edited to look nicer and be smoother. Hopefully.


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